


the winter wind is crying

by with_the_monsters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, TW: Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:52:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/pseuds/with_the_monsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He finds her blood-stained and unrecognisable, a stranger in his sister's body. As winter grows stronger and the walls of Winterfell go back up, Sansa's walls start to come back down.</p><p>(Spoilers for all books from the beginning notes so please don't click on this if you don't want them.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the winter wind is crying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dalyeau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalyeau/gifts).



> This is set in an alternate universe where Robb never takes the Crag and therefore marries a Frey and avoids the RW entirely. Also going with the theory that R+L=J, Dany crosses the Narrow Sea and teams up with Aegon and they start in the North by defeating Stannis and then with Jon's help the White Walkers and because of Jon ally with Robb rather than fighting him and then they sweep south and take the Seven Kingdoms yay. I am sorry about all the information but I want to make sure the set-up is clear. Also Sansa was married into House Lannister as in canon, but escapes blame for Joffrey's death and therefore remains a captive in King's Landing.
> 
> Okay now that's all over with, this is a birthday present for Ray (aka robbstark on tumblr) and I am very sorry it's so horribly rushed but I wanted to try to get it up before the end of the day! I very much hope you enjoy it Ray and I'm incredibly sorry if I've butchered the characters (which I suspect I have) but I don't do much ASOIAF fic ahhh

It’s Prince Aegon who finds her. She’s flat against a corner of her tower bedroom, and the blood on her hands is black in the darkness. 

"Lady Stark," he breathes, and she recoils further, tucking in on herself. "Lady Stark!" he repeats, but it's a shout this time, and it's directed down the stairs from whence he came. The pounding of feet on the stairs is the beat of a drum,  _boom doom_ , and at the sound of it she lets the knife in her hand fall. It doesn't clatter on the stone - no, it lands flat on the chest of the mute executioner at her feet.

Robb gains the door first. Their eyes meet across the room, and she betrays not a flicker.

"He was going to kill me," she says, and her voice is impossibly small in the aching bareness of the chamber, "The queen sent him to kill me before you could get to me."

Robb thinks that maybe, just maybe, he will never recover from the horror of this. Of seeing her, so lost inside herself. Of crossing the room and taking her in his arms and feeling her flinch away, inwards, like she can make herself even smaller. 

"Tend to the lady," he snaps at a cowering maidservant, hating the sheer lack of power to do anything as he releases his sister and she presses herself back against the wall, as far as possible from everyone in the room.

* * *

Queen Daenerys sends them home with a thousand Unsullied warriors to help rebuild their castle. She sits her new throne, dainty and silver, with her nephews on either side of her, silent watchful sentinels over the girl they both love. 

"The North is yours," she'd visited Robb's chambers to announce the previous night. She'd been facing him while she said it, but her eyes never left Sansa in the shadows at the back of the room. "It would be my honour to call you my ally, Your Grace."

"Allies," Robb had said firmly, and had offered the next part of his sentence like a plea, "My sister will be queen beside me. She was always meant to rule."

Daenerys, knowing the plea was not for her, had watched the Stark girl silently. Sansa made no sign that she had even heard. Her fingers twisted relentlessly, convulsively, in the material of her dress. 

"You could stay here, Lady Sansa," Daenerys had offered then, tone gentle, a mother to a child, "You must be used to the South by now. Your brother will be here with me, Jon, and I believe Aegon is quite taken with you. I should very much enjoy having you around."

That at least had provoked a reaction. Sansa had come forward, splayed her fingers across her brother's shoulder, dug the tips of them in.

"Please," she had whispered, "Please don't make me stay here."

Robb's hand had risen to close over hers, and Daenerys felt an odd, unsettling feeling wash over her. The pair of them, standing there, eyes unreadable and watching her like wolves watch the hunter slink forward over the snow, seemed as distant as the howling winds of winter raging through the North. 

"Then I wish you safe journey," Daenerys had replied calmly, wrapping regality around her like armour, and left the room as quickly as she dared. Fire and blood was all well and good, but all the fire in three dragons' mouths couldn't melt even a tenth of the ice in the North.

* * *

The innermost part of Winterfell is completed by the time they make it there. Sansa has barely spoken the entire two-month journey, but for when she is addressed, and her silence is ripping away at Robb's sanity. This is the sister he used to pretend to slay dragons for, the sister he wrapped up against all the evils in the world and promised to protect, teasingly but sincerely, when they were young and she crept into his bed with nightmares. She never says it, but he knows they're both thinking it. If he'd traded the Kingslayer like their mother had pleaded, he might have saved her years of torment. He might have been able to welcome home the sunny, optimistic girl of their childhood. Instead he has a young woman he barely recognises, who looks at him without seeing him at all.

"I can't do this," he says to Dacey one night just before the reach the castle when he's escaped the stifling quiet of the tent he's insisted Sansa shares with him, to ensure he can keep her safe even now, "I don't even - I don't know her anymore. I want to focus on rebuilding the North and repairing the damage the Lannisters and the Boltons did but I can't concentrate on it. She's all I've got left and I don't feel like I've got her at all."

"She's been through a lot," Dacey reassures him gently, bumping her mailed shoulder against his, "Psychologically more than any of us, probably. You're not going to get the old her back. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get to know the new her."

"How am I supposed to do that when she won't even speak to me?"

"Try," Dacey orders calmly, but her tone is firm. Robb sighs, casts a considering glance to the tent where his Frey wife is undoubtedly waiting up for him in hope, and turns back to his own instead.

Sansa is lying on her side facing the wall, as ever, and Robb supposes she's probably pretending to be asleep.

"Sansa," he says gently, approaching her bed and kneelingy beside it. He puts out a hand like he means to touch her, smooth the hair off her face maybe, but withdraws it quickly. She still flinches at the lightest contact, and Robb cannot bear to see that. It is just another reminder of all the ways he failed her. 

"I couldn't do it," he murmurs finally, which is not at all what he had intended to say, "I had to keep the Kingslayer, I had the responsibility to my people. Gods, if it had been just about us, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. But I had a kingdom, I had people to protect, I had a  _war_ to win, I -"

He breaks off. She has rolled over, is staring at him intently, eyes not even remotely clouded with sleep. He represses the urge to shiver. He has wolf's eyes too now.

"I don't blame you for that," she tells him, and her voice is quiet but firm, " _Valar Dohaeris_. All men must serve."

And with that, she turns back over, and shuts him out once more. Robb is left with the uneasiest of feelings. There's something far too resigned about the Old Valyrian she'd quoted, and snatches of dreams press to the forefront of his mind. There's another sister, after all, thought dead but - maybe the death he senses around her is not her own at all.  _Valar Morghulis_. 

Robb shakes off the feeling, and stands. He paces quickly away from Sansa, away from the guilt and the shame and the loneliness inside that tent. His wife is pitifully glad to see him, and it's dark enough and he's miserable enough that he manages to find solace in sharing her bed. 

That night he dreams of wolves, and cat girls slinking through Bravosi alleyways.

* * *

Bran returns to them a month into their reinstallment in Winterfell, although not quite in the way Robb had hoped his brother would come back. He's riding around the environs of the castle and Sansa is beside him - it took him forty minutes in the morning to persuade her to leave her solar and take in the crisp winter air, but he thinks it was well worth it. The freezing wind has brought a rosiness to her pale cheeks and a glitter to her eyes, and Robb is so relieved by it that he doesn't mind at all that it's a false heartiness. 

They're just moving through the ruins of the gatehouse, Unsullied all around them apparently oblivious to the cold as they work tirelessly to reconstruct the castle brick by brick, when there's a shrieking of horses ahead and several bolt back towards them, fleeing a great dark shape moving rapidly across the snow towards them. As it comes close enough to make out, Robb's heart clenches uncomfortably.

"Grey Wind," he breathes out, disbelief making a phantom of the direwolf that halts beside them, tongue flopping out of its mouth as it pants, too-intelligent eyes roving over the king and queen. 

"No," he hears as if in a dream from beside him, and then Sansa is slipping from her horse and running to the wolf, pressing her hand to its forehead, "Summer. But - but Bran, too."

"Bran," Robb snorts, and both wolf and sister turn to look at him then, too alike for his comfort. 

"Can't you feel him?" Sansa asks, brow drawn down in puzzlement, "He's there. In Summer. He came back to us."

"What do you mean,  _in_ him?" he replies, confused, dismounting from his own horse and holding it tight by the bridle to calm its restless shifting, frightened by the huge direwolf.

"I  _mean_ ," Sansa says, and by all the Gods, is that actually  _frustration_ she's displaying, he doesn't think he's ever been happier to see her malcontented, "In his skin. You know what I mean. You've done it with Grey Wind."

"No I haven't," he protests, although there's something starting to niggle at the back of his mind, moments in the heat of battle where he almost felt he had fangs, dreams of four paws racing alongside rivers searching for a lost sister. Sansa just  _looks_ at him, and Summer beside her, and eventually Robb just shrugs, which probably isn't very kingly, but there you have it.

Summer accompanies them back to Winterfell, disappearing to inspect the castle no doubt for Bran's sake. 

When Robb goes up to Sansa's solar that evening, he finds her sat in front of her fire with an arm around Summer's neck, girl and wolf leaning against each other in an abandoned sort of trust that makes something hurt somewhere inside Robb. 

"Is Bran still - still here?" he inquires in a low voice, and they both startle around, Sansa's hair long and loose and coppery in the firelight.

"No," she responds, shifting closer to the direwolf as Robb crosses the room and takes up residence in one of the large armchairs, "Just Summer."

The wolf rumbles somewhere deep down in his chest, and Sansa actually  _smiles_. Robb thinks he might die of shock. 

* * *

Months roll inexorably onwards until over a year has passed, and Robb has started to comprehend what it is to be a king when the only war is the one with winter. With the White Walkers vanquished by the combined might of the North and the Targaryen's dragons, the greatest enemies now are hunger and cold and weakness. Robb's wife is the first casualty in Winterfell, and although he felt nothing for the woman he mourns her passing, and that of the child she was carrying. She was simply unprepared for the severity of the Northern winter, and probably intensely lonely and homesick to boot. Robb knows that he treated her with honour and respect, but that he should have added warmth to the mix, and he is ashamed for it.

One night a few weeks following the funeral, the cold is the fiercest it has yet been and he finds himself shivering even beneath a mountain of furs. Made senseless by the freezing air, in the darkest hours of the night he is suddenly gripped with the terror that Sansa's going to die of the cold, and stupidly leaves his own bed at a dead run to rush to her chambers. 

When he throws open the door to her bedroom, she startles awake and sits bolt upright. Robb at first assumes he is seeing things - two direwolves raise their heads beside her, and then yawn disinterestedly. Their king-brother is hardly a threat, and they appear to return to sleep quickly.

"Who...?" he begins, and Sansa treats him to another rare smile, her fingers sinking into the ruff of the slightly smaller wolf.

"Nymeria," she explains without missing a beat, "I think it was Bran that found her. She'll be able to help us find Arya."

"Grey Wind was supposed to be finding her," Robb says, gritting his teeth to stop them clacking together, "He's been gone two years now looking."

"Bran's going to find him," Sansa informs him, but her eyes are sliding over him now, catching on the shivers he cannot repress, "You look freezing."

"Well," says Robb, "I am."

She hesitates for a moment, and Robb watches that unreadable mask descend as she clearly wages some internal debate with herself. He's just about to make an excuse and go back to shiver in his own room when suddenly she's shifting the wolves and beckoning him over.

"Nymeria and Summer are keeping it very warm," she explains, flipping the furs back to give him room to climb in, "I can barely feel the cold at all."

Robb is certain that there are a million and one very good reasons not to get into his sister's bed, but he's pretty sure the alternative is freeze to death, so he clambers in regardless and burrows down beside her, Nymeria a solid reassuring bulk on his other side. He's also pretty sure it's not particularly healthy to have the direwolves beneath the furs with them, but with Nymeria's furry warmth on one side and with Sansa lying stiffly, arm pressed against his, on the other, he feels properly warm for the first time in  _weeks_ , and finds that he doesn't really care at all about anything except that.

* * *

As naturally as the spread of winter, Robb starts sleeping every night in Sansa's bed with the two wolves on either side of them. At some point, Sansa's walls give a little and she starts cuddling up to Robb in her sleep so that they wake up entangled in one another, her hair across his face and his morning stubble rough against the soft skin of her forehead. When Grey Wind returns, he joins them in the bed, and the five of them sleep end-over-end like puppies in a manner that is definitely not appropriate for a king and a queen, but somehow gives them all comfort enough to sleep without nightmares.

(Sansa had turned away when Grey Wind and Robb reunited, and Robb had not understood why until he caught sight of tears tracking down her cheeks. And then he'd thought,  _oh_ , and remembered the letter with word of Lady's death delivered by raven to Winterfell all those years ago. He'd looked down at Grey Wind, met the wolf's adoring eyes, and had felt his heart break at the thought of losing his dearest friend for good.) 

As Sansa settles down around him, so too she settles down as queen. They sit twin thrones of simple solid wood, circlets of white gold on their brows, and somehow manage to rule justly and kindly. Robb has their people's respect, Sansa their love, and they might be young and lost and lonely but they make good monarchs, in the end. Sansa's tact smoothes over blunders and Robb's stout Stark honour wins fierce loyalty and if there was another war even then when everyone was cold and hungry, the Northerners probably would rise up and follow their beloved king and queen wherever they should go.

Jon comes to visit every now and again, arriving in great style on the back of his great green dragon, and while the three siblings wander around Winterfell exchanging news and descending into a tentative, easy intimacy, the three direwolves and the huge dragon regard each other with wary suspicion, which always amuses Jon and Robb and Sansa when they notice it.

It's Jon who brings them news from the capital, who flies in with extra supplies when they're needed, who arrives breathless and glowing to announce that a crown prince is born to the Southern kingdom (he's so proud he might burst, and he keeps saying, "He's got father's eyes, Robb, just like father's!") Robb and Sansa don't look at each other properly for a week after that announcement.

* * *

They have a feast in honour of their allies' new prince, and Robb doesn't know whether to be more surprised at the sight of Rhaegal with his head poking in through the huge doors opening into the hall or Sansa beside him, flushed with pleasure at having her people lively and full and happy. She turns to him halfway through the meal, eyes alight, and Robb thinks,  _winter is thawing_.

"Let's dance," she says after they're done eating, and Robb follows willingly. Anything to keep that smile on her face. She grips his hand, actually laughing, and firmly anchors his hand to her waist when he hesitates. For some reason, she seems almost a stranger to him now - he knew child-Sansa, cheerful and charming, and he has grown to know post-war-Sansa, wan and silent and wary. But this Sansa, vivacious and vivid and... well,  _beautiful_  - he doesn't know her at all. But he thinks he might like her a lot.

It is not until he experiences a deep ache at surrendering her to a Karstark for the next dance, and can almost still feel the slim soft steel of her waist beneath his palms, that he releases that maybe he likes her entirely too much. 

* * *

He goes to her bed that night again anyway because - well, he's a damn fool, and he thinks his tumultuous emotions earlier in the evening were simply a combination of relief at seeing her happy and unfamiliarity with her like that. They lie beneath the furs, pressed together to compensate for the lack of direwolves, all out hunting, and she cannot meet his eyes.

"Robb," she says finally, and he presses a hand to her waist, slides it up her shoulders and into her hair.

"Yes?" he replies softly, and she looks at him then, those wolf eyes guarded as they haven't been in months. Her hand lifts and her fingers play delicately with the collar of his night shirt. She watches them instead of his face, and she's reverted to that stone mask that reveals nothing of her emotions.

"Arya's on her way back," she announces, and Robb can tell from the barest flicker of her eyes to his that this is not what she wanted to say at all.

"How do you know?" he inquires, not pressing at all. She'll tell him what she wants to when she feels she is ready. 

"I saw her," Sansa says quietly, her eyes staying fixed on her fingers now, "I think I was a bird. It was in a dream, but - it was like the wolf dreams. It was real. She was on a ship, and there was ice in the water. I think she's going to find Rickon, and then she's coming home."

Robb's heart feels like it's in his throat. To have all of them back - Gods. That's a day he never thought he'd see. To think that Bran would be able to return would be even better, but Sansa seems sure he is stuck where he is, but happy with it. That he is watching over them nonetheless. She had said something about dreaming Summer, and picking up thoughts Bran left in his head. Robb doesn't understand the skinchanging, but he is trying. He dreams Grey Wind, some nights, and even thinks he might have managed to get inside his head while awake, the other day, because for the barest moment whilst they were sat in the throne room he'd been watching Sansa from a warm corner of the hall rather than sat beside her, covering her hand with his.

"Robb," she repeats now, and he catches at her hand with both of his, gives her nothing to do but look at him. It's his turn to remain silent now. Her eyes dive around until, as she seems to galvanise herself, she meets his eyes with a brittle kind of defiance.

"I know you got a letter from Jon about marrying," she announces, "And about marrying me to somebody. But I don't - I can't let that happen. I can't lose you, not now. Not again."

Robb barely dares breathe. This could be the conversation it all hangs on. 

"We need heirs, Sansa," he reminds her gently, "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell."

"I won't marry again," she retorts, and he feels her stiffening up beside him, "I won't, I can't, please don't make me."

"You don't want a husband to love? To protect you?"

"I don't _want_ someone else," she shoots back, whip-quick, "I want _you_." She reddens, then, the colour sunset over snow, and Robb thinks, _oh._ He cannot believe this, this impossibly glorious luck. That the lingering touches, the burning looks - they were not simply his own morbid imagination. Her face turns down like she wants to press it into the pillows, but Robb grips her chin with strong fingers, forces her to stay looking at him. 

"There's a way," he all but whispers, and he can't believe he's doing this, gods, honour is his  _defining quality_ , "We're king and queen, and we need princes and princesses. And - well, it doesn't have to be common knowledge, I mean, if you want it. Nobody minds about Daenerys and Jon and Aegon, after all, and look at how they're all related, it's -"

She gasps then, like it's sinking in suddenly, and before Robb can think anything more of it she's swarming upwards to, ever-so-tentatively, press her mouth to his. Robb knows it should be sickening, to feel his sister's mouth on his. But in truth, he hasn't thought of her as his sister since they found her with Ilyn Payne's body at her feet and blood all over her beautiful dress. He's known it of course, he thinks as her tongue presses tentatively past his lips, of course she  _is_ his sister. But, well - what are you supposed to do when you wave goodbye to a naive child and say hello to a strange, beautiful young woman who you know absolutely nothing about? 

In all honesty, Robb doesn't know what he's supposed to do with any of this. He hasn't really known what he was supposed to do since the Lannisters chopped his father's head off. But, well, with the promise of a future holding nothing but Sansa, that seems like the perfect kind of certainty. 

She heaves a breathless moan into his mouth, and Robb surrenders to the war inside his head. This is something they will have to deal with, have to really think about, before Arya and Rickon return. Then they will be four strangers trying to learn each other anew, unrecognisable from the sheltered summer children who said goodbye to each other in another lifetime. They've lost wolves and parents and their home since then, and all they have snatched back is Winterfell. But somehow they have survived it, come out strong, and so long as there are Starks to love each other, in whatever way that love presents, Robb thinks that all the rage of winter couldn't tear the North apart. 


End file.
